International week of struggle to free the Five
AN international event dedicated to the release of the five Cubans fulfilling unjust sentences in U.S. prisons began Sunday, March 30 with the simultaneous participation of organizations from 25 countries, among them Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and Belgium.
During the week, convened by the Argentine committee for the release of the five Cubans, diverse activities are taking place until April 7 originally intended to back the appeal to be filed on that day before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
In Brussels, the campaign began with a two-hour protest on the steps of the Stock Exchange, given that police refused permission to protest outside the U.S. embassy.
Some 100 protesters met at the central building with a large Cuban flag and placards demanding the liberation of the Five, rejecting the U.S. policy of terrorism and war and exhorting Latin American resistance to imperialism.
As part of the protest, committee members also collected signatures and handed out leaflets to passersby informing them on the irregularities in the trial of Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, René González, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González.
The activities are also publicizing the case in order to fight the campaign of silence by the major media, setting up discussion groups and meetings, etc.
The committees to free the Five are also organizing an exhibition of photos and posters related to the lives of these young men, detained in 1998 and sentenced in December 2001 after a rigged trial in Miami, to severe prison terms ranging from 15 years to two life sentences.
Participants are sending letters to the UN Human Rights Commission denouncing the conditions of solitary confinement to which these men are currently being subjected.
They plan to show videos of the case and of violations committed by the U.S. authorities during the legal proceedings. Likewise, press conferences, radio and television programs are planned as a way to circulate information related to their case.
The two books written by Gerardo Hernández and Antonio Guerrero are to be launched and a web page with updated information on the Five.
SOLIDARITY FROM THE U.S. PEOPLE
Gloria La Riva announced in San Francisco that thousands of U.S. citizens, as well as those of other nationalities, are to mobilize in the city of Atlanta in early April to express their solidarity with these Cubans unjustly imprisoned in the United States for fighting against Miami mafia terrorism.
She highlighted that in the days previous to April 7, thousands of people will congregate in the state capital of Georgia in reaffirmation of the demand that they be released.
La Riva explained that in the United States, one of April’s most important tasks in support of the Five is to initiate the campaign to circulate information -via e-mail- in the southeast of the country where a considerable number of Cubans live.
She also noted that the U.S. press has remained silent about the case, without even revealing that due to a high-level order from the Bush administration they have been locked up in solitary confinement in each of the prisons where they are currently held; hellish places of physical and psychological torture.
She added that they have absolutely no contact with their families or letters, nor can they listen to the radio, watch television or read the newspapers. Their cell space has been reduced to the minimum with “the purpose of humiliating, demoralizing and forcing them to give in.”
“They are in sub-human conditions,” she added, “and national and international standards of prison treatment are being violated.
Dr. Corey Winstein, a doctor by profession and co-founder of the California Prison Focus, a non-profit organization working with over 2,700 persons held in solitary confinement in that state, told a Radio Havana Cuba journalist that the treatment of the Five is routine in U.S. prisons.
That practice, which violates prisoners’ rights, Weinstein stated, has a number of psychological effects on its victims. They can fall into a deep depression or even into a state of temporary insanity.
In the case of the five Cubans, he clarified, their profound awareness of who they are and what their mission is, will help them to understand why they are there and thus overcome the situation with the passing of time. (FCA)
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